It happens everywhere, all the time, and to all of us. Negative consumer posts. Consumers who feel the need to start talking thrash about your brand or organization on social media. Do you know how to respond, or even if you should respond for that matter? Well, a new research conducted by researchers from the University of Hamburg and the University of Southern Denmark[1] are giving us new insights on the do’s and don’ts when it comes to interacting with negative electronic word of mouth.

An important factor that influences the community members’ perception of the community’s goal instrumentality is whether or not the message is post in a social-goal oriented community, or a functional-goal oriented community.

Wait. What does this all mean? Well, people within a social-goal community seek positive social interactions with like-minded people who are passionate about a brand or organization. Think about Apple fans creating an Apple fan page. People within the functional-goal community seek functional benefits within communities. This means obtaining value information from other members’ opinions and sharing information to accomplish specific tasks, such as making a purchase decision. Think about people who use TripAdvisor or Yelp.

So what is a Brand Community? A social brand community is an online platform created by consumers to interact with other consumers about a brand. So this means your brand or organization is not directly involved with this community!

Alright. So about those dos and don’ts… Yes, let’s get into the practical implications!

1. Do not delete it!

I know… it is far from pleasant to read a comment from someone talking thrash about your organization. But you should never delete a negative comment!

The most important thing to keep in mind about social-goal communities is that their interaction is all about positive interaction with like-minded people who are passionate about a brand or organization. So when someone does post a negative comment within the social-goal community, other members will start advocating your organization. Trust in your fans!

When it comes to the functional-goal communities, you should be happy with negative comments! Negative word of mouth within a functional-goal community has a positive effect on the community members’ perception of the community’s goal instrumentality. In other words, they see the post as helpful. When you start deleting negative posts it will decrease the credibility of both brand and its corresponding community. That is something you do not want!

2. Show off your customer service skills, but stay humble!

Instead of deleting or ignoring negative posts about your organization or brand, show the customers that their opinions matter!

By simply acknowledging someone’s frustration or dissatisfaction, people tend to feel appreciated. Telling people within a social-goal community that you feel sorry for their unfortunate experience already creates the idea of empathy from the organization and minimizes the damage toward brand image.

However, stay away from the functional-goal communities. The moment you start to react on negative posts within functional-goal communities, you will be seen as an intruder. Since people are looking for factual information and value others experiences, it is not wise to debate whether or not this experience is your fault. Do not change ‘bad’ into ‘worse’!

So overall; negative comments aren’t that bad. As long as you monitor that what is happening and jump in when it is really necessary. Although this sounds easy enough, it is not an exact science when or when not to intervene the social conversation.

The understanding of customer behaviour in online brand communities can hold the key to business successes. Self-explanatorily, this topic attracts much attention and has been plenty of blog post written about. However, so far when we have turned to science with the question of how decoding brand community participation helps us to predict profits, we have got mixed results. Academics papers found that higher levels of community participation show a high level of customer satisfaction, these customers are more likely to pay for premium services and that it increases customer visit frequency, as well. On the other hand, science proved that it can, at the same time, lead to adopting products from rival brands and even to reactance in some cases, due to the community pressure. Therefore, the question still stands: What is the optimal level of brand community participation, how shall we, communication experts, manage the social media accounts to get the right kind of activity from our potential consumers?

It seems that two recent and significant researches from the Information & Management scholarly journal can bring us closer to the answers. In an article from 2015, the authors focused on examining four different types of participation: content consumption, content contribution, community collaboration, and community leadership. Content consumption and contribution count as low level participation in the online community, while the latter two represent a high level of participations. The result of the study says that it only works for some of the customers in a brand’s online community to push them towards a higher level of participation. The paper found a clear result, though, that low level participation will bring more purchases, therefore, expanding the online community with more followers and ‘likers’ is always an efficient strategy. The case against incentivising all members in the community into community collaboration and leadership that its success (more consumption) will depend whether the individual is promotion or prevention focused (regulatory focus).http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378720616300271

The second article, written in 2017, also examined consumer engagement behaviour and its relationship to revenue. It differentiates among the channels: Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are looked into separately. The social media activities on these platforms clearly reflect the future economic performance of the product/service (in this research, this was applied to movies). However, the findings point out that it is only true in the case of Facebook and YouTube. The engagement level on Twitter does not show this effect. Of course, it is important to have a proactive and coordinated presence in all channels. But firms should seek to foster interactive consumer engagement behaviour within Facebook and Youtube more actively that on Twitter. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378720615000592

Social media sites as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are essential communication tools for each of us. Contrary to traditional media, online social media have given us more control over the content, timing, and frequency of generated information, and have provided them with immediate access to information at their own convenience. The summary from the two scientific articles is that expanding the online community and have at least a low-level engagement from the consumers is a must, and this is especially important on Facebook and on YouTube.

The popularity of social media and the facilities to easily communicate with publics has made many organizations decide to integrate social media into their reputation management. It is very important to have a good relationship with your stakeholders in order to be successful as an organization. Trying to build, strengthen or maintain (new) relationships with stakeholders through social media became a big part of the work activities of the PR professional. But how genuine are these relationships actually? And are organizations really using social media to be social?

Author: Cees Hoogvliet

#RelationshipGoals?

PR-professionals claim they engage in strategic communication between the organization and the stakeholders to build meaningful relationships that are mutually beneficial. A recent paper made some valid points regarding the identity of the relationship that PR professionals are trying to forge:

A relationship is characterized by interacting with each other and engaging in dialogues to co-create meaning within or outside this relationship. However, organizations and their PR professionals often use their social media for sending out press releases, advertisements and other on-way communication messages. Research supports this claim that one-way message dissemination is used more often by organizations than symmetrical two-way dialogues with their stakeholders. How can one build a relationship without someone communicating with each other?

When a stakeholder tries to interact with an organization by sending them a message or leaving a comment on their social media-page organizations do not always respond. When the organization, or the PR professional who is speaking for the organization, does respond the stakeholder does not know who he or she is interacting with, which makes it rather hard to build a relationship.

PR professionals are often passively lurking on social media in order to study the behaviour of a public group and jump into the conversation at the right time. They, however, hide the fact that their real intentions are to ‘subtly’ influence the public in a certain direction beneficial to their organization. The benefits for the public are not always clear, which goes against the supposedly ‘mutually beneficial’-relationship.

Para-so what?

So, organizations try to let their stakeholders believe that they are in close relationship with the organization, which is called a parasocial relationship. With this type of relationship the organization remains in control and the stakeholder only receives, but is unable to send information. This deviates strongly from a normal relationship, but is this necessarily a bad thing? And is it avoidable? Research showed that:

As an organization it is impossible to build a mutually good relationship with each individual stakeholder.

It is important that the public feels connected to and is engaged with the organization in order to maintain a good reputation.

Despite the fact, that PR is not about building real relationships and manipulating their publics, it is still a crucial part of maintaining a favourable reputation and should thus be permissible?

So how do you feel about organizations engaging in Parasocial Relations (PR)? Is it deceptive and unethical or just necessary?

If you haven’t noticed that social media applications such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are taking over the world, you have pretty much been living under a rock. Yes, even the POTUS uses Twitter as his main communication channel to the people. I’m not sure if that’s a valid argument…but let’s not get into politics. That being said, it is important for PR experts to jump on the social media bandwagon. The question that arises is: How? And more specifically, what are the most effective ways to use this booming medium during a crisis? The long answer to these questions have recently been published in a study by the scientific journal Elsevier. Lucky for you, I’ve listed some best practices from this study below.

1. Engage in ‘tea parties’ online, yes dialogue is the key!Crisis managers should be pro-active online by engaging in a dialogue with the public. This can be done by listening to concerns of stakeholders and by replying to the requests of a crisis victim. The ‘sharing’ dimension of social media makes it a great tool for emergency responses. However, during an emergency situation organizations must actively seek the attention of affected victims, even if there might be an overload of sharing or hashtag usage. The main task of crisis managers would be to make sense of the immense amount of social media data (reposts, comments, hashtags, you name it) and use it to their advantage. So, basically it is important to keep the conversation running between crisis managers and the public. During a crisis, a two-way social media communication strategy is a MUST for every company.

2. Be an expertor pretend like you know what you’re talking aboutIf you even want the public to consider and eventually accept the information you share on social media. Then you better remember this concept: Source credibility. The credibility of the source, in this case you or some influential posting for your organization on Instagram or Twitter for example, can make or break the persuasive quality of a message. A credible source basically has the power to reinforce the legitimacy of the information provider and it could enhance approval and trustworthiness among the public.

(Source: twitter.com/realDonaldTrump)

3. Do not upload messages to slow or too fast..timing, timingA perfect message updating speed is necessary for effective processing of messages, the feeds shouldn’t be updated to slow or too fast. The first thing that popped up in my mind is: How can being fast on social media be a bad thing? Think of some Trump (or his daughter’s) tweets that have gone viral because of typo’s or the presence of doubtful facts. If the tweet or message is poorly executed, the message will also be judged poorly. But how to reach the perfect equilibrium then? Well the answer is simple, the information should be shared frequently enough to be noticed by the public or to be found in case of emergency situations. To make this information available, it is wise to encourage members of your organization to repost or share official social media feeds on their personal accounts.

4. OWN the #When a crisis or a state of emergency occurs, companies will promote a certain hashtag (#dumptrump) to make information available. A company needs to come up with a hashtag, in order to ‘own the hashtag’. The privilege of owning a hashtag is to easily direct crisis information to the right target audience. Imagine if instead of #dumptrump, #stoppresident would have been used. This would have made it a lot more difficult for the public to find information on the issue, as I am sure that the second hashtag could apply to a number of countries or presidents around the world.

5. Be the watchdog for fake rumorsPR experts within organizations must monitor activities on social media during a crisis. Yes, social media has many advantages, but its main advantage is also a disadvantage. The rapid sharing of information, also allows for the rapid sharing of false information. Two words: Fake news. Any given person on social media can create and share content, which in turn can go viral. When the public is misinformed by a source, it is important to notice it as soon as possible and rectify the situation by sharing truthful information.

I’m going to go ahead and make the bold and arguably unfounded claim that 9 out of 10 public relations professionals will tell you that when one is faced with a social media crisis, one should engage in genuine dialogue with the customers. And yes, this is indeed the way to go.

However, even though said professionals are theoretically on the right track, these good intentions often don’t manifest practically; and I am not only referring to that cool little start-up down the road, but also huge, global corporations do the same thing.

In an article written by Larissa Ott and Petra Theunissen, which was published in the Public Relations Review about two years ago, the authors take a look at three examples of crisis communication. The companies in question are Facebook, Applebee’s and Jetstar.

First off, Applebee’s fired a waitress over her having posted a picture of a patron’s bill to social media, legibly including said patron’s name, for breaking the privacy policy. Problematically, as news spread about the incident, users online found that prior Applebee’s had made posts to their profile that appeared to break that exact policy.

Anonymous’ slogan goes for pretty much any angry crowd of people online: “We do not forgive. We do not forget.”

As you may have assumed, all hell broke loose and Applebee’s Facebook page was soon flooded with thousands of negative comments. In response, the social media team went on to delete comments deemed negative or non-constructive and began arguing with others, hoping to persuade them. Let me say this loud and clear: do not – I repeat – DO NOT make this mistake. You’re not helping anyone, quite the opposite actually, as you are feeding into the existing anger and potentially just digging your own grave; deeper and deeper.

Facebook found itself in a similarly tricky position when Greenpeace launched a campaign called ‘Unfriend coal’, aimed at Facebook’s use of coal-energy for their serverfarms. In response, Facebook decided not to establish a dialogue with upset users, but rather just broadcast messages addressed to Greenpeace. Now, don’t get me wrong – this was not perfect, to say the least, but if you are low on resources or not willing to or capable of engaging users in meaningful level-eyed discourse, then simply stick to not engaging at all, so as not to fan the flames.

Finally, there’s Jetstar – relatively smaller and less liked than the two examples above. And yet, for multiple occasions where their crisis management was put to the test, they made public statements to all and then focused on affected individuals, doing their best to help them in a direct, personal manner, outside of the public eye.

So, in summary, what can we take away from this:

Don’t underestimate the users/customers.

Don’t be a hypocrite – they’ll know.

Make sure to have genuine dialogue with stakeholders.

If you cannot, then refrain from engaging with individuals.

Next time you are in a situation like this, do yourself and all parties involved a favor and consider these four points before making any counter-productive moves.

Newly published research papers (1, 2) now point out the public’s crucial role in forming perceptions of organizational crises . In three easy points, this article gives implications how professionals can use the studies’ findings to communicate more effectively in times of crisis.

The immediate phase after your crisis event started holds some pitfalls for you as a crisis manager. Neither you, the news media nor the public really know what happened. A study finds that when there is little information available, people start to speculate about the recent events on their own. Rumours or false information may spread on social media as a consequence of this behaviour.

To do: Try to immediately clarify evidently false information by communicating with your stakeholders. The advent of social media has enabled you as a professional to interact with the public in close to real-time. However, be careful to only communicate information that you have also verified. Do not join speculations or base your replies on assumptions you have about the event. If your replies later turn out to be inaccurate or false, your credibility and reputation will be severely damaged.

To do: When preparing for different crisis scenarios, do not only focus on potential messages in your responses itself, but also mind to whom you are talking to first. Focus on strengthened media relations for potential crisis cases that are severe and therefore more likely to be big in the news. In these cases, the public discussion on social media will be largely guided by the media coverage anyway.

Over the last couple of years, companies not only have decided to incorporate media publishing and producing of content into their practices, but they have also changed their ways of incorporating media logic into their practices. Instead of only using the logic of mass media and focusing on the development of this logic, they have started to see the advantages of digital media, networks and channels. So what are the consequences of these kind of developments and are they worth the mediatization?

Reorganization

Past research showed that mediatization of a company has multiple consequences. For the company researched, the organisational structure of the marketing and PR department had to be reorganized, because of the division in tasks of advertising campaigns and media relations.

This seems a good example of a wrong division of marketing, which your company will have to deal with when mediatizing. You will have to go beyond the rules and customs applicable to mass media. Besides that, I want you to remember that a reorganization is a lot of work, a lot of getting used to for the employees involved and takes time. On the positive side, when incorporated, the PR and marketing department will probably be more in sync than ever before and therefore more efficient and productive.

Power

Another consequence of the incorporation of media practices is that that the company has more power over its stakeholders, not only by influencing the decision making with their published media content, but also by influencing the decision-making process, so by agenda setting.

This is a sneaky way which can make stakeholders forget some of the important decisions they actually want to influence. In this way, companies can influence stakeholders’ decisions in a way that matches the will and interest of the companies, which is advantageous for your company. However, keep in mind that stakeholders will not be happy when they find out that they are being manipulated in this way!

Building customer relationships

What happens when companies start producing their own media is that customers become involved in making the content. Therefore, they will be involved in the process at a very early stage, which might make customers establish and build relationships with the company through ongoing communication, better than would have happened with traditional media.

This is actually a consequence of which I see no negative side and is one of the reasons I would certainly recommend mediatizing your company if you haven’t already.

Even though previous research highly recommends mediatizing your company, a lot of companies who already have or are mediatizing do not actually know how to measure the effect of their mediatization. This is a problem, since they can go to far with the mediatization, like I mentioned before and might lead to skepticism among stakeholders.

Therefore, it is important to find the right balance in mediatizing your company and to remember, reputation is key!

One of the most challenging parts concerning the public relations practitioner’s profession is the ethical issues and dilemmas that the practice of PR may present. According to academics, a large percentage of people perceive PR professionals as manipulators and believe that they use clever strategies in order to convince the public that what’s wrong is right (Steven R. Van Hook, PhD). But which are really the principals and the guidelines that preserve the core values of the ethical practice of public relations? and which are the factors that motivate a practitioner to operate according to those principals? In terms of research, it is very difficult to identify and measure PR practitioners’ attitudes towards ethical or unethical practices. However, the socio-cultural environment where professionals operate is apparently a key factor.
According to research, ethical norms are differently perceived among PR practitioners of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, a country’s position on international ranking indexes of democratic values, freedoms, and transparency appears to be compatible with the commitments of several PR practitioners to ethical practices. In an attempt to investigate whether PR ethics are related to the culture and the social environment in which practitioners function, Toledano and Avidar investigated a sample of PR professionals operating in New Zealand and a second sample operating in Israel. These two countries were selected based on their ranking positions on the Fraser Institute Index of Human Freedom (2012/13). New Zealand, which was ranked by the index as number one, represents a society that enjoys more freedoms. On the other hand, Israel represents a more restrictive socio-cultural environment concerning human rights, as it was placed close to the bottom of the list (position 105). Attempting to measure practitioners’ attitudes to ethical practices specific to social media, the researchers identified a gap between attitudes of professionals in New Zealand and Israel. More specifically, Israeli practitioners were consistently lower in their level of knowledge and commitment to PR ethics in comparison to the New Zealand practitioners. Moreover, the researchers emphasize the importance of the impact of different socio-cultural environments on how ethical principals are formulated.
Apparently, societal and ethical values play an important role, however, are there actual ethical ‘borders’ in PR practices? and what happens if a practitioner has to cross those ‘borders’? For instance, international firms operate in several countries with sometimes different ethics and societal norms. In August, 2014, beauty company Garnier donated beauty product packages to female Israeli soldiers. Photos of the female soldiers holding the products went quickly viral on social media and received a lot of criticism. The company issued an apology but still received thousands of negative comments from consumers of many different countries, such as the following: ‘Garnier a bit late for apologies after rewarding soldiers for killing children. No thanks. Boycotting you for good’.
As we realize, a PR practice that might be considered effective and ethical for a specific socio-cultural environment, might be considered unacceptable from a different perspective and might lead to a crisis situation. Therefore, professionals should always be alert and well-educated about the moral barriers concerning their profession.